Excitement Grows As 3,500-Year-Old Mummies Are Discovered In Luxor, Egypt In Tomb Belonging To Royal Goldsmith

Archaeologists in Egypt have just discovered a 3,500-year-old tomb near Luxor which has been dated to the New Kingdom era (16th to 11th Centuries BC), and the tomb, which belonged to a royal goldsmith, holds mummies of a woman and her two children. The tomb is located in a very special cemetery where the highest government officials and noblemen of their time were buried along the west bank of the Nile.

While Antiquities Minister Khaled el-Anany has said that the tomb is not in the greatest condition, it nevertheless is a very exciting discovery and contains goods such as 50 funerary cones, a funerary mask and a statue which has been found to depict the royal goldsmith Amenemhat and his wife, as Aljazeera reported. However, it is unclear at this moment in time if the three mummies that were discovered in the Luxor tomb are related to Amenemhat, according to the BBC.

The 3,500-year-old Egyptian mummies were found just off the main chamber of the tomb in a burial shaft and archaeologists have confirmed that the female mummy died at around the age of 50, having suffered from a bacterial bone disease. Both of her sons were found to be in their 20s and 30s and their mummified bodies are reportedly still in excellent condition today.

Khaled al-Anani has stated that the work at the 3,500-year-old tomb in Luxor, Egypt has really only just started, in a sense, despite the many objects archaeologists have uncovered in it so far.

“We found many objects of the funerary equipment inside and outside the tomb. We found mummies, coffins, funerary combs, funerary masks, some jewellery, and statue. The work did not finish yet.”

Anani also mentioned that there were four new names of mummies which had been discovered by archaeologists which might be buried elsewhere.

“What about those four new names? How about their tombs? Their tombs are not discovered yet. But I believe they are owners of the tomb. I believe, inshallah, for the coming season, we are going to do our excavations. We are going to do our excavations in this area. So I believe we can find one, or two or maybe four if we are going to be very lucky, four of them in this area.”

Earlier in April, archaeologists uncovered another tomb in Luxor in the same necropolis which was found to contain not only several mummies, but also over a thousand funerary statues and 10 wooden sarcophagi, as National Geographic report.

The most recent discovery of the 3,500-year-old mummies as well as those found back in April have all occurred close to the Valley of the Kings, which is where some of Egypt’s greatest rulers were laid to rest, like King Tutankhamun.

Egyptian authorities are hopeful that the royal goldsmith Amenemhat’s 3,500-year-old tomb in Luxor will help them to discover even more mummies in the Draa Abul Naga necropolis as they continue their research.